Yale Students Lead First-Ever Citizens’ Assembly on School’s Public Voice

Rick Harrison
Students sit for a discussion on a couch and chairs in a library

(Left to right) Chris Mitchell, Matthew Zoerb, Vasilije Pantelic, and Mariana Kelley discuss the use of institutional voice as part of a student-run citizens’ assembly at ISPS

Before agreeing to engage in Yale’s first student-led-and-embodied citizen’s assembly, Matthew Zoerb, ’26 had only thought a little bit about the topic they came to discuss: how and when the university should or should not use its institutional voice on public matters.

Over two days in March, he and about 20 other randomly selected undergraduate students gathered at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies for a student-run exercise in participatory democracy inspired by a class taught by ISPS faculty fellow Hélène Landemore.

They listened to a group of faculty experts on the topic. They brainstormed values and guiding principles. They split into groups to debate arguments for and against university officials speaking out on issues confronting the wider society. Eventually, they drafted and edited a statement, reaching a broad consensus on their recommendations.

“I hadn’t spoken with anyone on this topic until I was randomly selected to engage with it for two full weekend days,” Zoerb said “The experience prompted some really interesting conversations with my friends outside the assembly. I think I was able to convince more people of my way of thinking.”

Katherine Johnson, a junior majoring in political science, attended Landemore’s “Politics Without Politicians” class last year, and drew inspiration from the growing global trend in which governments empower randomly selected citizens to deliberate and recommend policy solutions to sticky problems. Major examples include a 2016 citizens’ assembly in Ireland to consider issues such as abortion and an aging population and the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate in 2019 and 2020.

“I had been thinking about our political systems for a while,” Johnson said of the course. “I don’t think the U.S. system of representative democracy as we have it right now is adequately representing people and their opinions. I wanted to see for myself through this process how viable a citizens’ assembly could be as a solution.”

Shao Ming Lee, a Ph.D. student advised by Landemore, helped Johnson lead an organizing committee to build the assembly. Because they planned to study the effectiveness of the process on participants’ opinions compared with a control group that did not go through the same process, the students obtained permission from the university’s institutional review board for research involving human participants.

“It was a real learning experience,” Lee said. “We were starting from scratch. We didn’t have a format to follow.”

Student sits at a table with her hand on her chin

Mirabel Solomon joined about 20 randomly selected undergraduate students for a student-run exercise in participatory democracy.

Lee also drew inspiration from the experience, watching students start from a point where they had never thought about the issue before and leave saying they felt qualified to talk about it with others.

“I remember the first day at breakfast, it was dead quiet,” Lee said. “But by the end of the assembly, it was bustling and noisy, and there were friendships forming. From the perspective of an organizer, that was very satisfying to see.”

The event was sponsored by ISPS’s Democratic Innovations program. Co-directed by Landemore, Democratic Innovations aims to identify and test new ideas for improving the quality of democratic representation and governance. In February, Democratic Innovations helped convene a student assembly on the sidelines of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris.

“I was very impressed with how the students organized the assembly,” Landemore said, noting how she provided advice but left decisions and logistics up to them. “And they conducted a very high-quality conversation.”

Landemore and the organizers wished they had succeeded in recruiting closer to their target of 50 participants, particularly as dissenting voices were underrepresented by the end of the weekend.

Landemore suggested that a future assembly might attract more students and avoid selection bias if they recruited more broadly, did not advertise the topic in advance, and offered some form of academic credit beyond the small cash stipend. In addition, she felt they might gain more institutional support with a topic that had not been already debated by a university-wide committee.

In October, the university’s Committee on Institutional Voice primarily recommended against making official pronouncements on matters outside the university except in rare instances. The ISPS-sponsored student assembly concluded that Yale should not remain neutral because such a stance might divert from the university’s mission statement toward “improving the world today and for future generations.” The students also recommended forming a standing committee of faculty, administrators, and students to guide future institutional pronouncements.

Landemore expressed great appreciation for the expert panel, comprised of Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy; Karen Goodrow, superior court judge and lecturer in Ethics, Politics and Economics; and Pericles Lewis, dean of Yale College, Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of Comparative Literature, and professor of English.

Zoerb praised the event’s organization and execution.

“Everything they promised happened,” he said. “They did very well facilitating discussion among the students, and the expert panel was very helpful for gaining a grounded picture of the issue. They gave excellent advice, which informed our deliberations.”

Alan Gerber, ISPS director and Sterling Professor of Political Science, shared his enthusiasm for the students’ initiative and alignment with ISPS’s values.

“We created Democratic Innovations precisely to support projects like this one: a new generation of citizens learning from each other and experts to push the boundaries of what we know and expect from our democratic institutions,” Gerber said. “At the most general level, the students’ project is about experimenting with a new method for how to deliberate over policies and contribute to collective decisions. Through projects like this, we learn about different approaches to democracy and expand the range of methods that are familiar to people as they seek to address evolving challenges. This spirit of innovation is at the core of the Democratic Innovations program.”

Lee expressed hope that both students and the Yale administration could learn from the experiment and work toward building more legitimacy for policy changes.

“Citizens’ assemblies have proven that citizens no matter how old or young or polarized can get together to make quality decisions,” he said. “In the university context, they can help to include students and make them feel a more valued part of the university community.”

Lee and Johnson plan to analyze the data over the summer and build on the experience.

“We are hoping this won’t be a one-off experience but rather a blueprint for the future,” Johnson said. “We hope this will add to the data and literature of citizens’ assemblies in general. But also show Yale that this is a reliable and useful way for students to share their input with the administration.”